This Changes Everything for the Dallas Mavericks…

This Changes Everything for the Dallas Mavericks…

The Dallas Mavericks made a couple of major trades at the deadline to acquire PJ Washington from the Charlotte Hornets as well as Daniel Gafford from the Washington Wizards in the process they ended up shipping out Grant Williams Seth Curry ran Holmes as well as some draft Capital but in theory this trade

Makes a lot of sense for the Mavericks if the goal is to try and contend against the rest of the Western Conference as far as just addressing some of their major concerns to me perhaps the biggest need that this trade addressed is their need for defense we

All know the Mavericks aren’t the best team in the world defensively especially when you compare them to some of the other top teams in the Western Conference Dallas currently ranks 21st in defensive rating allowing 11 18.3 points per 100 possessions which is below League average even though they do

Have the 11th best offense in the NBA on the year so far that defense is going to have to improve if they want to be able to compete against some of the other high-end contenders in the playoffs so they did what I would consider to be a

Pretty Sol solid job of bringing in two front Court players that can insulate their defense a little bit and address those concerns let’s start off with Daniel gaffard Gafford is definitely one of those guys who probably doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as he deserves and you probably mainly know of

Him because of his highlight dunks that he gets relatively frequently but Gafford is also a very solid Defender he has the ability to operate as a paint presence to help shut down drives and even just simply deterring guys from getting to the rim in the first place I

Wouldn’t say that he’s an elite rim protector but he’s definitely serviceable and an upgrade to their defensive front Court depth he’s not going to be some versatile one through five defensive Center but they just need somebody who can hold things down in the paint when Derrik Lively isn’t in the

Game or he’s in foul trouble as much as I like Derrik Lively and as much as I think he’s going to be a great defender for the Mavericks in due time he’s still a little bit rough around the edges and he has some polishing to do to his

Offensive game and so I think gafford’s going to scratch a major itch for them he’s got some institutional knowledge that Lively’s going to be able to learn from and he can kind of operate as somewhat of a mentor to Lively since they’re relatively similar players in the sense that they’re both Rim running

Vertical threats and drop coverage Defenders more often than not another major weakness that the Mavericks have is offensive rebounding they’re the fifth worst offensive rebounding team in the NBA and that’s a major differen maker in a team’s ability to win games especially for a team that attempts the

Second most threes in the NBA per game high three-point volume leads to more offensive rebounding opportunities and it’s important that you have players that can consistently snag offensive rebounds to try and extend possessions Gafford is a 99th percentile offensive rebounder according to dunen 3.com he’s averaging the 15th most offensive

Rebounds in the NBA and only 262 minutes of play per night Derrik Lively and him are both averaging 2.9 offensive re rebounds a game the fact that the Mavericks are going to have highlevel offensive rebounders on the floor at virtually all times is going to be huge

For them offensively Gafford is like I said pretty similar to Derek Lively he’s a rim running big man that can catch lobs from Luca and the most important thing is that since he’s this vertical threat as a rle man defenses are going to have to honor him in the pick and

Roll Dallas thrives off of collapsing defenses when Luc is handling the ball in the pick and roll and Lively is rolling to the basket so now they’re going to have that same kind of threat on the floor at all times we know Luca is more than capable of capitalizing

When teams help off of the weak side of the floor willingly leaving Corner Shooters open but that usually only happens if the defenses believe in the ability of the Rolling big man to finish the play not only is Derrik Lively able to do that but so is Gafford so they’re

Clearly doubling down on this philosophy it’s very similar to me to what the Clippers are doing with Daniel Ty and zubot Hardon runs a ton of pick and roll with both of these guys and it works because they don’t have to change their play style if one or the other goes to

The bench they can do the same things and it keeps a degree of continuity and I think that’s going to be a similar case for the Mavericks where things get really interesting for Dallas is when you look at what they’re going to be working with in PJ Washington I don’t

Think it can be emphasized enough how much of an upgrade PJ Washington is going to be relative to what they were getting out of Grant Williams and I say that as somebody who doesn’t think Grant Williams was quite as bad as he was made out to be even if he wasn’t great Grant

Williams this year is a far better shooter on paper than PJ Washington just in terms of raw three-point efficiency but if I can speculate a little bit let’s think about the situation that Grant Williams three-pointers have been coming in this year he’s been playing alongside Luca donic and Kyrie Irving

Two guys that are going to demand tons of defensive attention teams would quite often leave Grant on the corners when forced to rotate or send help on pick and rolls and Grant would get some really wideopen looks as a result PJ Washington benefited from the attention

That lamelo ball gets as a score but one lamelo missed a lot of time this year and two there’s not a lot of other offensive options to send help onto in Charlotte so PJ Washington generally wasn’t going to get as many open looks from three as he might have gotten if

Playing alongside multiple offensive threats like he will be in Dallas and this might lead to an in increase in that three-point percentage especially if he’s not having to brunt as much of an offensive burden the bigger Factor at play When I look at what PJ Washington brings to the table offensively is his

Ability to create off the catch PJ Washington is a very athletic guy and he’s confident attacking Closeouts and getting to the basket in this sense he’s able to operate more as a traditional stretch four and his off ball movement is going to do a good job of creating a

Lot of open passes for Luca when he’s bailing out after warping defenses but when you add in the fact that PJ Washington plays a lot bigger than he actually is you start to get the ability to use him as more of a small ball Center using him in on ball screening

Actions where he can roll to the rim to get fed when defenses are hedging against Luca or he can pop out to the perimeter when defenses aren in drop you wouldn’t really be able to tell just by looking at him but PJ is the same height

As Grant Williams but he’s more of an athlete and he has a massive 7 foot2 wingspan so he’s able to play much bigger than he actually is which is why you would often see him operating as a pick and roll big man with lamelo during his time in Charlotte this serves as

Some evidence that he can give the Mavericks a ton of lineup flexibility offensively all of the offense that he’s going to bring to Dallas is great but I think he’s going to have even more of an impact on the defensive side of things I mentioned his 7’2 wingspan earlier that

Lets him play a lot bigger than he is and that applies to the defensive side of things as well he’s been a solid Defender every year of his career even when Charlotte hasn’t been a good defensive team he’s fully capable of holding his own when defending guys off

The dribble and he’s solid when it comes to attacking Closeouts without getting beat when they pump fake and he can either funnel teams into the help waiting for them down low or stick with them himself and defend them at The Rim his defensive rebounding is going to be

A huge help for Dallas they allow a lot of offensive rebounds which simply put gives teams more opportunities to score so if he’s able to come in and contribute to their ability to end opponent possessions by contributing on the defensive glass Dallas is going to immediately benefit from it when you

Combine the sum of what PJ Washington brings and what Daniel Gafford brings it’s easy to see that both of them address a ton of their concerns directly and the fit is pretty seamless the prospect of all that defensive versatility in their front court with Daniel gaffer Derek Lively PJ Washington

And Derrick Jones Jr just means that they can theoretically adapt to a lot of the different matchups that they might run into in the postseason they’re now going to be able to roll out a starting lineup of Luca Kyrie Derek Jones junr PJ Washington and Derrik Lively with Daniel

Gafford Tim Hardaway Jr Maxi kleba and Josh Green Off the Bench and that’s a solid Nan rotation heading into the playoffs they’re not without flaws and no team really is but this trade made them significantly more equipped to make a run here at the end of the season and

Hopefully set themselves up for a deep play playoff run hope you guys enjoyed the video I’d really appreciate it if you considered leaving a like and subscribing if you want to see more stuff like this huge thank you to all my patrons for helping support the channel

Thank you all so much for watching and I’ll see you in the next one

The Dallas Mavericks had one of the biggest 2024 NBA trade deadlines with the Daniel Gafford trade and the PJ Washington trade. With the intent of building a competent roster around Luka Doncic that can compete for a championship, getting Daniel Gafford supplies them with a big man that can fit seamlessly alongside Luka Doncic. With the addition of PJ Washington, Luka has a versatile defensive power forward that can space the floor and create for himself off the catch. The Dallas Mavericks needed to make moves, and Grant Williams allowed them to go and get their guys. In a difficult Western Conference, PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford might be just what they needed.

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